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So I got thinking, under what kind of circumstances do you reckon Chaos marines would band together and act effectively as Deathwatch would? So they get together some vets and such and take on dangerous operations.

Just thinking out loud as could look really nice to build up and play counts as DW.

I could imagine Abaddon gathering together such a team!

"You, you, you and you. Come with me."

Chaos as-is? Possibly but it would require some unusual circumstances. Remember that the motivation for most, if not all, Chaos Marines is either fear of the next bigger guy or selfish desire to become that bigger guy.

Teaming up for a big operation would be a stretch because all the members of the tear are effectively in it for themselves. Now that said, their lord or more likely their patron god could hammer together an 'elite squad' to do something that an army could not. Though again, that would be the Lord sharing some possible glory so he'd need a very good reason to not be there himself to claim the prize. The squad could probably work as a team, but there certainly would not be that bond of team, and once they get their hands on the prize, it is very likely that backs will be stabbed.

That said, you could frame it as a Deathwatch team that fell to Chaos on its own, forming something of a mini warband. Caught out like that, I can see them resorting to, an eventually corrupting, their Deathwatch training.

The masters of their legion could task them with it or they could receive the mission through divine inspiration. The Black Legion, the Iron Warriors and the Word Bearers strike me as having enough coherence for the first to be useful while the second applies for everything else. The Alpha Legion would figure stuff out on their own and the Night Lords can be paid to do anything. Being plain old mercenaries certainly isn't out of the picture for most legions.

Easy out: a group of Alpha Legion agents infiltrate the Deathwatch itself. In that case they'd act almost exactly like the Deathwatch !

What you're looking for is basically a squad of Chosen, likely under the Black Legion or Word Bearers banners.

 Fafnir wrote:
What you're looking for is basically a squad of Chosen, likely under the Black Legion or Word Bearers banners.

Pretty much this.

Plus, if you read any of the Black Library fluff (ADB's Night Lords stuff is delicious for this) it is quite possible for individual squad members to go down their own specific paths of worship as well.

The novel Daemonworld, which is perfect pulp, is partly about a killteam of chaos marines. A sorceror of the word bearers has gone renegade and is planning something strange on a world of the maelstrom. A multi-talented squad of chaos marines have to go after him and figure out what he is up to. However, they are all Word Bearers.

Devram Korda, Ygethemor, and the other two Chosen of Abaddon are effectively from separate allegiances and come together to do things like retrieve the Heart of Chaos on a mission for Abaddon. I don not know whether they are all from Sons of Horus or if any of them joined the BL from other Legions.

I remember reading somewhere that brotherly bonds are totally a thing with chaos marines. I think some the former sons of horus that joined abaddon when he created the black legion joined because they were sick of wandering without a cause and longed for the brotherhood that they shared with some back during the crusades. There are no legion wide tight groups with csm but small groups? Sure. It's not like every csm ever wants to become the next abaddon, some would be fine with proving themselves on suicide missions....for a time anyway.

It's easy to imagine them as frothing traitorous psychos and the video games we've had so far haven't helped with their image, but they can be a lot more that. Their individual ambitions might get in the way sometimes, but even a band of berzerkers know where to run to when you point them towards an enemy. (Just don't get in their way)

That would be really cool.
In stead of being drawn from different chapters, they could be taken from different warbands in the same legion or worshiping the same god.

I think what makes the most sense are an elite Black Legion unit... despite being heavily drawn from the remenants of the Sons of Horus, the Black Legion are in fact drawn from the survivors of all the Traitor Legions, with all sorts of different Chaos god affiliations.

...Above someone said they'd all be Chosen, but I think they'd be far more diverse.

Chosen would be a starting point, but in the same way Deathwatch could draw in characters, Terminators, Raptors, bikers... I think this hypothetical unit would instead draw upon the diverse elite units like Berzerkers, Plague Marines, Noise Marines, Rubric Warriors, Obliterators, Raptors, and Possessd.

The chaos marines are not a pile of individualist scumbags as the imperium wants represents hahaha.

Of course there are all kind of personalities, but also some kind of loyalty, in particular on the legions (maybe the WE the less haha) where also will find a good discipline.

 aka_mythos wrote:

Chosen would be a starting point, but in the same way Deathwatch could draw in characters, Terminators, Raptors, bikers... I think this hypothetical unit would instead draw upon the diverse elite units like Berzerkers, Plague Marines, Noise Marines, Rubric Warriors, Obliterators, Raptors, and Possessd.

As far as the fluff is concerned, a Chosen could be any one of those things. However, as far as the rules are concerned... well, you get what you get, sadly.

Read Gaunts Ghosts, one of the later novels. Chaos actually send a kill team comprised of 'Paters' after Gaunt iirc or the saint, one of the two. Pretty darn good read, one of the Paters was even a dreadnought.

Couldn't the case be made that the entire 'Renegade' plot line of Chaos Space Marines is the equivalent of Deathwatch? Basically a rag tag team of elements from various backgrounds banded together for common cause?

Many of the books involving Chaos Space Marines that don't specifically focus on a single legion fit into this theme as well. Even the Ahriman series starts like this where a Chaos Lord of unknown origins has a band of miscreants from various legions all working under him.

All sounds pretty sweet guys thanks
Anyone know if any Grey Knights have ever succumbed to chaos?

Biadetic wrote:
All sounds pretty sweet guys thanks
Anyone know if any Grey Knights have ever succumbed to chaos?

GKs are supposed to be nonpareil in their purity so probably very few have (thanks Ward! We love lore that restricts creativity just so you can make someone "the very best!" /s). However, GKs aren't invincible (at least in 7e) and if a Chaos Space Marine were to pry the purity seals off, they could loot the armor off of one.

Biadetic wrote:
All sounds pretty sweet guys thanks
Anyone know if any Grey Knights have ever succumbed to chaos?

Never. Period. It's one of those defining elements of GK fluff that goes all the way back to the beginning, even before Ward got his grubby little hands on everything.

While, as Gnome said, a Chaos marine could potentially try to loot the armour off one, GK armour is so heavily anointed that wearing it would likely be impossible (or at the very least incredibly impractical and painful). That said, the GKs have some great models that would be good conversion fodder, but you'd have to spend most of your time working to make sure it was not identifiably GK in order to fit with 40k fluff.

With the possible exception of draigo :3